How Prophecy Works: A Study of the Semantic Field of נביא and a Close Reading of Jeremiah 1:4–19, 23:9–40 and 27:1–28:17. By William Kelly

Abstract

This monograph, the author’s published PhD thesis from the University of Edinburgh, sets out to explore ‘how prophecy works’. As the subheading clarifies, though, its aims are more modest: it investigates how prophecy works in three selected passages in the MT of the book of Jeremiah (1:4–19, 23:9–40, and 27:1–28:17). Chapter 1 summarizes the scholarly debate pertaining to the meaning of the Hebrew word ‘prophet’ (נביא) and its associated verb forms. Influenced by especially Barr’s cautionary words, Kelly argues the answer to the questions ‘how prophecy works’ and the related ‘what a prophet does’ should not be sought in the etymology of the root נבא. Rather, it can be obtained by exploring its semantic fields and its syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Part I, consisting of chapter 2, reveals the fruit of this exploration. Kelly painstakingly analyses every single instance of the Hebrew root נבא in the book of Jeremiah. This investigation, which in my view could have been presented more succinctly, reveals several notable (but not necessarily novel) insights. First, prophets are predominantly associated with verbs that denote oral communication, through which they reveal the outcome of the divine revelation. Second, prophets and priests share similar functions. Third, the verbal forms of נבא nearly always take an indirect object: one does not prophesy ‘something’ but ‘about something’. For instance, one does not predict doom or salvation but speaks about people and their relationship with God. Fourth, there is no salient semantic difference between the Niphal and the Hithpael forms of the root נבא. Lastly, the semantic associations of ‘prophesying’ are akin to those related to ‘dreaming’, something which, in turn, suggests that auditory and visual divine communications are mutually complementary.